


I Just Want to Turn the Lights on in These Volatile Times

by marauders_groupie



Series: I Only Understand Love and Liberty [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Also - real actual plot, Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Arranged Marriage, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Marriage of Convenience, POV Bellamy Blake, Revolution, Wells is still alive!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 06:57:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5238734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauders_groupie/pseuds/marauders_groupie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy Blake becomes a revolutionary in the Kingdom of Ark because he has no other choice. He thought the worst thing that could happen to him was getting married to Clarke Griffin, the princess of Ark, but revolutions are never fair and you can never rely on allies like Diana Sydney. </p><p>Modern royalty/arranged marriage/revolution AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Just Want to Turn the Lights on in These Volatile Times

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, due to popular demand - part 2 of the arranged marriage/royalty AU! Now with plot because why not? Let's do this!
> 
> In case you haven't read the first part, let me summarize it for you quick (but you might want to check it out nevertheless): Bellamy is a revolutionary, Clarke is the princess of the Kingdom of Ark. Her mother and Thelonious Jaha are the rulers, king and queen with equal power (not married, just sort of there), but wealthy never care for the poor and the riots begin. In order to stop absolute anarchy Clarke believes would come about with Bellamy and Sydney overthrowing her mother and Jaha, she takes the deal of marrying Bellamy in which he becomes the king and she the queen.  
> They get off on the wrong foot (seriously, what'd you expect?) but over time they learn how to work together and fight for their people. Also, you know, a lot of that pent up sexual frustration. 
> 
> A big thanks to Nat, [alltheworldsinmyhead](http://archiveofourown.org/users/alltheworldsinmyhead) (great fics, people, she writes great fics) for the idea about a modern royalty AU. I owe you one! <3
> 
> The title is from IAMX - Volatile Times, and the title of the series comes from our fave Victor Hugo's cynic, Grantaire. 
> 
> Enjoy!

 

 

 _“In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?”_  
  
                                                             _Pablo Neruda_

 

 

* * *

 

 

Bellamy Blake doesn’t become a revolutionary because he wants to see his people bleed and die on the streets they call their own.

He becomes a revolutionary because there is no other option.

It is too late for his mother, only a matter of months before she passes away, but Bellamy doesn’t want to see his sister, his neighbors, his people sharing the same fate because no one dares to stand up to the regime.

If he had been a child infatuated with ideas of revolution and rebellion, he would have stopped being one as he watched a man die in front of his eyes for the very first time and he was unable to stop it.

He knows that they are using him. He is young, barely twenty-three and he is the perfect face for the posters they plaster across the kingdom.

“You look like revolution, baby,” his mother tells him, brushing away the curls falling into his eyes. “But it is no place for you.”

Children never listen to their parents and that is why his vocal chords are bursting by the end of the first week – his roaring shouts boom across the squares as he calls people to follow him. The streets are no longer streets in which children can feel safe. Now they are funeral pyres burning bright and bitter, smoke rising high into the air along with the raucous laughter of those who can only hope to succeed.

If they don’t – their punishment will be death. And so the people throw themselves into the riots with reckless abandon, pillaging the shops of the wealthy, with key figures like Diana Sydney giving speeches to rile them up.

Everyone forgets that life goes on and that this is not a permanent state of being. Tents they’ve put up in the middle of the squares are not permanent residences, people who visit them at night are not permanent loves.

Diana Sydney comes to his tent one night, short after Octavia left with news of their mother – she is too weak to eat – and Bellamy eyes the woman. He doesn’t trust her. She may be the one who incited the riots but he can see how much she yearns power.

Bellamy doesn’t want power. He just wants to turn back the time – allow his mother to live and his sister to have a happy childhood that doesn’t include splitting a stale slice of bread with her brother.

“We could use someone like you.”

“I thought you were already using me,” he replies, shrugging off his jacket and falling to his cot. It’s easier for everyone if they’re all in the same place. If they return to their homes, there is a chance that they won’t come back.

Revolutions, Bellamy realizes after a while, take a lot of planning to be spontaneous.

“For posters, Bellamy,” Sydney smiles, her voice sweet and sugary. She wants to look like a mother but comes across as a general. “But you are smart, aren’t you? We could use smart people.”

He knows how to survive, if that is anything to go by. Knows how to make something out of nothing so Octavia wouldn’t go hungry when their mother’s eyes start hurting and she can’t sew anymore. But those are survival skills, his actual education is no equal to the wealthy children’s – high schools, colleges in far Europe.

The most he has from Europe are books on history and mythology – his only sources of knowledge. People like him, workers, they don’t get the chance for education – not when there is food to be brought to the table.

“I didn’t finish high school.”

“That hardly matters. You know how to make people listen to you. No one wants this escalating, Bellamy,” she pouts. “And I am afraid that nothing else can happen in this moment. We are angry, but it takes someone like you – someone diplomatic and reasonable – to negotiate with the tyrants.”

And that is how he starts standing up on the stages, people waiting to hear his every word. That is how every shout in the air is addressed to him, every angry yell before charging at the police bears his name, and that is how the spilled blood becomes his responsibility.

“At least there are perks to it,” Octavia jokes bitterly one night. He keeps her far away from this madness, even if every muscle in her body is ready for a fight. She is desperate like everyone else. But she is desperate to _live_.

It is not a perk when a long-legged brunette leans her head lazily on the doorway to his tent as he is poring over the maps of all the estates the rich own.

“You need company?”

And he lets her wrap his hand around her waist. Lets her push him down on his cot and straddle him. Her skin is warm from the fire and her eyes are full of mirth when he asks her what she’s doing.

“Looking for some comfort. Aren’t you?”

He is. He is. But the concept of comfort in these volatile times seems almost like a cruel joke. The sheets they tangle themselves in are starchy, the tent is made out of old parachute fabrics and the only light he has is a fluorescent spotlight flashing right into his eyes until the girl is nothing but a spot in his vision.

They inhale fire and violence and exhale something that could never be desire. Their mouths are hungry for something that could extinguish the flames and their hands are nothing short of desperate as they rip each other’s clothes off as if that could rip the whole kingdom to shreds.

The sex is fast and hard, trying to achieve the speed that could make them forget about everything they’ve done. But he sees the bruise on the girl’s ribs when she lies draped over him after, quiet and breathless, and he sees the cut on his hip, and he can’t forget.

Her name is Roma, he learns as he watches blood trickle down her chin two days later. The streets are on fire, voices so loud it is almost quiet. All that violence so gruesome it nearly makes him feel nothing at all but Roma – and that is her name, fit for a revolution whose victim she is becoming as she lies in his arms.

People are shouting, glass is being smashed and the air is thick with tear gas. Revolutions are not poetic or beautiful; revolutions are hot on your skin but cold in your soul – a house lit on fire and nothing but ice inside.

Roma stills when the first shot is fired and Bellamy knows that there is nothing peaceful about death. It is not brave, it is not heroic – it just is.

“She was only here because of me,” he whispers into the maddening noise and no one hears.

Bellamy was so proud of never having killed anyone. As if not pulling the trigger made his hands clean of blood. No, he never pulled the trigger but it was his voice that sent many to die and where he was once naïve enough to believe that he was innocent, now he knows that he is nothing but a monster.

Roma’s voice haunts him; broken words slurred through blood pooling in her throat. “Please tell my parents it didn’t hurt.”

Her eyes, peering into the clear blue sky above them – a morbid thing, as if it is laughing at them for being mortal and dying – come to him before sleep every night and now he knows what death is.

So he doesn’t sleep, never able to forget Roma, the first girl he watched die. She was a living, breathing human and she no longer is. Other girls parade through his tent – their goal a common one – to forget the violence, to chase away the bloodshed jerking their bodies awake just when they thought it would be a peaceful night.

The climaxes rip through their bodies as if to remind them that it hurts to be alive.

 

**

 

The talk show host smiles smugly when he sees Bellamy, “Good. You look the part.” and Bellamy wants to laugh because this is not a movie – the man in the mirror carrying a rifle over his shoulder is who he is now.

The jacket he is wearing has bloodstains on it and it is not playing the part – it is simply the only one he has.

“Can you tell us more about the reasons behind the riots?”

_Can you tell me more about what life was like before you watched someone die?_

They shove microphones under his nose and ask him what the rioters plan to do next. The lights are too bright and he just feels cold.

“Whatever the hell we want.”

 

**

 

Bellamy hates Clarke Griffin on principle. She’s a princess cut from rubies and marble, ramrod straight spine and her shoulders squared as if she is marching into a battle. But she is forgetting one thing – marching into battle is not as dignified as history makes it out to be; your shoulders slump and your body contorts under the weight of someone else’s blood on your skin and eyes staring at you like you can chase death away.

He hates the princess because the people he runs and fights with are his brothers and sisters, and to her they are all nothing but a heap of political dissidents. How dare they exile her out of her manor, how dare they ruin her plans for college?

It is because he has seen her face so many times on the screen that he laughs out loud when Sydney tells him that he is to marry her.

“Marry the princess? Why, she’s got a thing for the working class?”

Diana Sydney shakes her head, trying for sad but coming off as content. “To strengthen the deal. You will become the king and she will be the queen.”

He doesn’t want to become the king – he’d already told Jaha that. There is no use for him on the throne – his battlefields are the streets that brought him up in dark corners and cracked pavements he scraped his knees on as a child. The parliament, he thinks, is for someone less angry.

“She won’t be a problem, it’s only a matter of months before she flees. The princess can’t take the heat,” Sydney assures him and he nods.

His mother, on the other hand, sighs tiredly when he offers her a sheepish smile and a bouquet of roses.

“Don’t bring me those if you stole them, Bellamy Blake. I didn’t raise you to become a thief.”

“Hi, mom,” he pecks her cheek and sits down on the bed. It’s too clean for his dirty clothes but he doesn’t think his mother minds. There is only love in her eyes as she brushes away his curls one more time, her fingers thinner than the last time he’d seen her.

“Did Octavia bring you the blankets?”

“Yes, mom, she did,” he chuckles, intertwining their fingers and squeezing them just a bit. Aurora Blake looks worn-down and watching life seep out of her only makes him angrier and more adamant in taking the deal. “But I need to talk to you about something because you’re bound to find out sooner or later.”

“What is it?”

“I’m marrying the princess. It’s because our best bet is for me to become the king.”

His mother doesn’t speak for a very long time and it’s the first time that he can’t read the look he sees in her eyes. It scares him, it scares him and suddenly he is so young and begging for her permission.

“Don’t do it, Bellamy.”

The flowers lie in the trashcan as he leaves.

 

**

 

He becomes the king and he wears his working clothes to the wedding out of spite. If he lets them fit him for a suit and turn him into this polished image, he will no longer be a man hailing from the people – he will become the figure of a king. And that is the last thing he wants to do.

Clarke challenges him, hates him, shouts at him and later says nothing at all. She doesn’t care, doesn’t care enough to even fight him later on and when he introduces Miller as their new head of security she just shrugs, perfect calm in her blue eyes.

“Whatever the hell you want, right?”

 But she slides the newspaper across the table they dine at one night all the same and his stomach plummets as he reads the headline. “ _Bellamy Blake – The Rebel King_ ”

The king. The king. The king is dead, long live the king. One of the first things the girl sitting across from him and studying him had told him. She was right and he was wrong to believe that he could still be a representative of their people when he sleeps in a comfortable bed and they in blankets drenched with sweat.

Bellamy hates Clarke Griffin on principle but she is still his wife and that’s why he tells Murphy to shut up when he starts fucking around one night.

“Does the princess like it fast and dirty, slumming it down with the peasants?” Murphy winks at him and freezes instantly when Bellamy levels him with a cool glare.

“The princess is now the queen and I am the king. So watch your mouth.”

Clarke Griffin is not to be mocked. She is not to be underestimated and he sees it in the steel of her eyes, the way she twists and coins her words into whatever the opposition wants to hear while pushing her own cause on the down low. She is well-versed in politics and it shouldn’t be a relief when she decides to help him after the press almost starts hounding him for going to see his family.

But it still is, sitting on his bed and drinking coffee while they think of a way to raise the taxes on the rich and channel more funding into education and health.

And Bellamy sees more cruelty in the cold emanating from the walls of the manor and ruthlessness in desperate struggle to keep the excessive wealth, than in the images of people bruised and bleeding in the streets, permanently etched into his eyelids.

But Clarke is not cruel – her eyes are full of passion as she challenges the ministers and the advisors. They are not fire. They are ice – cold, unforgiving, the force that promises to bury you alive so deep that no one will hear you scream.

She is nothing like he’d ever seen before and he watches her through juxtapositions and contrasts – the defiant set of her jaw, the polite smile; the mild-mannered conversations, the constant swearing that echoes through the manor. She is a girl of eighteen and he is a boy of twenty-three, and both of them are so young and their hearts are so heavy.

 

**

 

Aurora Blake dies in the spring and with her a part of Bellamy vanishes as well. He doesn’t blame himself, surprisingly, not for her death.

But he blames himself for not being like she taught him to be – soft, refuse to let the world make him hard. He wanted to choose kindness over cruelty and peace over violence but somewhere amidst all the bloodshed and fury, he missed the right turn.

Clarke holds him in her arms that night and he feels so young and so small, unprotected and left to fend on his own against the winds that batter his body mercilessly. She is no better and they are a walking shipwreck, cutting their skin on icebergs and licking the wounds as if that could seal them shut.

He doesn’t know when he allows her to see him cry but it isn’t like he particularly cares for what she’ll think of him. Not anymore. He doesn’t feel the need to put up the walls anymore because she is not his enemy. And the realization scares him, that this girl could hold so much power in her to make him feel like he is not alone.

There is marble woven into her skin and steel deeply ingrained in her eyes, but he knows softness when he sees it. People like him always remember it and hold onto it because it is so rare.

“I’m a monster. My mother raised me to be better than this.”

“You’re not a monster, Bellamy,” she says and it sounds like her heart is breaking. He doesn’t know why, doesn’t know anything anymore.

Clarke stays with him until the morning light, cards her fingers through his hair and holds him close as his body shakes with violent sobs. She doesn’t say anything and leaves before he wakes up, but there is a cup of steaming hot coffee on his nightstand when he bats his eyelids open and he exhales like he’s letting go of the weight.

 

**

 

They fight. They fight and politics is more merciless than the police could ever be. He watches Clarke as she stumbles into the library at the end of the night, lets down her hair from a tight bun and exhales for the very first time when she settles next to him.

“Kane agreed to revisit the labor law.”

“Collins created a draft proposal for taxation.”

“I am going to kill Cage fucking Wallace.”

Words change but the sentiment stays the same – she is tired (and so is he), but they are fighting the good fight even if their bones ache. They are hollow and brittle but they struggle ceaselessly, as if to say – you won’t break us down. You can rip our hearts out of our chests, hit us with whatever you’ve got, but our soul stays intact.

The only thing we have is our soul and it is not yours to take.

It is during one of those nights spent in the library (and that room is his favorite in the whole manor; all that knowledge opening its pages for his eyes to read) that she turns to him with a strange look in her face and says,

“I was wrong.”

Everything else is a blur, everything else is a bliss because she kisses him like she is tired of fighting everything – but this she can’t fight anymore. It is not wildfire when he deepens the kiss, swallowing the guilt and the anger to allow for desire to spread, but it is a slow flame that gets them through the night.

She is not Roma, she is not Fox, she is not a girl who hungers for salvation because she’d seen too much. Her hunger is not iron and blood and she isn’t looking to forget people dying in front of her. She’s looking to accept standing at the sidelines and doing nothing.

And he’s looking at her.

They laugh that night and he can’t stop himself because she looks genuinely pissed off to like him, and it feels like a small victory that they are allowed to do that. Forget for a second that they have all that responsibility to bear (two bodies are stronger than one) and just lie around, laughing and kissing and –

Well, it’s not fucking if it feels like salvation, is it?

 

**

 

Octavia is settling in nicely and even if everything else makes him cringe, Octavia being happy is a good thing.

He wakes up to her and Clarke waiting for him in the dining room and he doesn’t get the chance to say anything before a strawberry hits him square in the face, followed by giggles.

“Damn, Clarke, you’re a good shot.”

“You’re a fucking lousy shot, no matter what my sister says,” he huffs as he sits between them, pecking the both on their cheeks. Octavia swats his hand away but Clarke just smirks.

“You’re just jealous, Blake.”

He hums in confirmation, completely unfazed by her façade, and brings the strawberry to her lips. There is a second in which her eyes widen almost comically but then her mouth opens and she takes it. Bellamy isn’t even sure what possessed him to be this domestic but they’re sharing the shit already – they can share good things, too.

“These strawberries are good,” Clarke says and Bellamy rolls his eyes because she always looks so surprised to see good things. You’d think she never had them.

“Maybe not throw them at me next time?”

“Maybe.”

 

Except for his sister and his – _wife?_ – ganging up on him, Octavia helps out Wells often and it isn’t long before she appears on TV herself.

She takes the questions in stride, always calm but there is no mistaking the fire in her eyes, until the interviewer poses question to do with women’s rights and it blows up in his face.

Bellamy and Clarke are on the bed in their bedroom, Clarke sitting cross-legged in the middle of it and watching every second of the show with interest. Bellamy, on the other hand, raises his head from one of the books on the history of the Kingdom of Ark only when Octavia says something that makes him laugh.

“She’s going to _drag_ him, Bellamy,” Clarke whispers, her eyes widening as Octavia sits up straighter and flashes a smile at the interviewer. The smile is feral, all teeth and shark-like and Bellamy is very proud of his sister.

“Well, Mr. Emerson, if you believe that rapists are provoked by short skirts and it is entirely women’s fault for being raped, then I suppose one could believe that you too are provoking me right now with your stupid questions. And if I punch you, won’t it be your fault for not thinking to bring headgear?” Octavia asks, smiling innocently all the while and Bellamy can barely resist pumping his fist. Clarke is equally stunned and amazed next to him. And then Octavia perks up and her smile grows wider. “Purely hypothetical, of course.”

The newspapers next day are full of headlines along the lines of “ _Octavia Blake smashes the patriarchy_ ” and “ _Ark’s Sweetheart_ ”, but Octavia just grins and high-fives Clarke when the latter raises her hand over the breakfast.

They’ve got it good. Inexplicably, surprisingly – they’ve got it good.

 

 

**

 

Clarke frowns when she first sees him wearing a suit, but her eyes are full of admiration.

“We’ll make a king out of you yet.”

But it doesn’t feel good on his skin, the clean shirt and the clean lines that wrap themselves around his body, making a product out of him – not a human being.

“But I don’t want to be a king.”

And then Clarke smiles, props up on her toes and peels away the suit jacket from his shoulders, pressing a kiss that is all fire to his lips.

“I know.”

When he shrugs on his working jacket and his pants, threadbare at the knees, she is no longer a princess but a woman he respects and cherishes. Her smile could light up the whole town and it puts creases into her resolve of being cold.

“I like you better this way.”

He does, too.

 

**

 

Everything goes to hell one morning in June as Octavia and Wells throw open the doors to their bedroom, matching panicked looks in their faces.

Clarke is the first one to stir, throwing away the covers to the floor and getting to stand in front of Octavia, her hands in Clarke’s. She talks her down from her panic as Wells paces back and forth, and Bellamy mostly just stares at the sight of the two most important women in his life working together.

They’ve gotten along ever since Octavia came to live with them, but this is something else. This is knowing that his sister is his responsibility but Clarke took on a part of it, too, like she did with the burden of being a ruler.

“Jaha, what’s wrong?” he asks, feeling something inside him shift as if even his heart knows what happened before him.

Wells Jaha shoots him a loaded look and then stops in his tracks. “Bombs in the square.”

The workers’ unions were supposed to meet today. Everyone. Agriculture, farming, pharmacists, miners in the north. Everyone, to review the proposed laws.

Clarke speaks before he’s had the chance to and her arms are holding Octavia tight around her middle as his sister stares forward, blank.

“Do we know who did it?”

“They think it was you, of course. Not a single wealthy member of society was hurt. Sydney is already gathering people to come over here,” Wells explains and then inhales, his eyelids closing as he tries to calm himself. “The word is on the street that they are coming to kill us.”

While Bellamy is blinking at Wells, terror building up in his chest until he can only see red, her best friend’s words spur Clarke to action. He watches her crossing the room back and forth, collecting papers and throwing them into a bag.

“Clarke,” he sputters. “What are you doing?”

She looks unimpressed when she turns to look at him. “We’re leaving.”

“Where? And what happens then?”

“Wait,” Octavia raises a hand, back to her former self. This is what they’ve learned growing up poor – no time for shock when you have to survive. “It’s Sydney. _She’s_ the one who put bombs in the square.”

“O – what?”

“She was supposed to be there, Bell. At the meeting. But she wasn’t and she reemerged now that everything’s blown over. Tell me that isn’t suspicious to you.”

It is. And he knows Sydney, can’t help remembering the way she tried to be sugar and compassion when she is venom and vengeance. She has it in her to do something like this, that’s for sure.

“Did Raven catch anything on her cams?”

Wells nods and Bellamy remembers how he always tends to gravitate around the mechanic when they’re in a meeting. Always there, not pushing, not pressing on her to make any sort of decision. Just there for the people he loves, Wells Jaha.

“There is something but there’s no way to know because the bombs cut off the power and I can’t reach her anymore.”

“Fine,” Clarke finally says, squaring her shoulders. “We leave for Raven’s immediately. Secretly.”

“I’m staying.”

Everyone looks at him like he’s gone insane and maybe he has. Really, there’s no way to know anymore, but if he can get Sydney to believe that he is still on her side – they could get more evidence, more leverage.

Otherwise, the kingdom is going to collapse into anarchy – something they’ve been fighting for to stop from happening.

“Sydney will believe I’m still on her side if I stay. And if I’m on her side, I can get more information.”

Clarke’s voice is sharp and her eyes could singe the skin off of his bones when she moves to stand in front of him. She’s shorter but it feels like she’s looming over him. “No fucking way.”

“Clarke, it’s the right thing to do.”

“You’re not staying.”

“Well, since I don’t take orders from you, I’m gonna need a better reason.”

He can see a storm brewing in her eyes and then, like nothing at all, it dissipates and the pain is back. Even their bones are tired of being scattered across the sharp rocks digging into their skin and turning them into vessels, into sacrifices, into pawns.

Not people, never people.

“I can’t lose you too.”

It’s her voice that breaks his heart but he still plants a kiss to her forehead and shrugs on his jacket. “I’ll be fine.”

He wants to say that he doesn’t want to lose her either, that he cares for her, respects her, is starting to fall in love with her.

But he doesn’t.

“You’ll be safe at Raven’s, right?”

Clarke nods and he can see her blinking away the tears. Like always, they piss her off and he’d laugh if they weren’t such a goddamned tragedy.

 

When Octavia presses a kiss to his cheek before leaving and whispers “Get knocked down, get back up”, Bellamy wants to laugh out loud because – when did this happen? When did she start standing up straighter and talking sharper? When did she become the resilient one?

(She has always been the resilient one. That is who they are. They propagate against all odds.)

They leave, promising to meet him at Raven’s tonight, and Bellamy sits in his and Clarke’s bedroom like a wreck of a man. They fought for doing the right thing, they fought and this is what you get for fighting – you get pushed into the mud, a boot stomping on your face, you get broken bones and you get nothing at all.

But it doesn’t mean he’s going to stop. No, he’ll keep fighting as long as he can keep getting up after falling down. It’s the only thing he can do.

Miller comes over when he calls him and he is the one standing next to him when the voices outside the manor grow louder, chanting Clarke’s name and calling for her death. They aren’t carrying pitchforks and torches but they might as well be, the amount of hate he sees in the people’s eyes undisguised.

Sydney widens her eyes when he opens the doors, Miller tensing up next to him. He tries to remember who he was before everything got quieter, before his blood started flowing slower in Clarke’s company.

He never should have been a revolutionary. He never wanted it. But Bellamy did what he had to do and now he had to go back to it.

“The bitch left,” he hisses at Sydney. “She fucking _ran_.”

The bitch. He never would have said that about Clarke but now he has to. Now he has to pretend that he doesn’t care if she arrived to Raven’s unscathed or if her hair is full of dried blood.

Sydney buys into his scowl and the anger that must be flaring in his eyes, but not for the reasons she believes.

“We’ll find her, Bellamy. We’ll find her and make her pay.”

“Damn right.”

Miller and Bellamy leave with them, hundreds of people shouting and whispering, a cacophony of noises and voices. They are back to the streets they know, back to the tents that are being put up again after a brief period of peace.

Sydney turns to him after a while. “And where is Octavia?”

“No idea,” he shrugs. “She’ll probably be in my mother’s house, though. I thought I’d check it out tonight.”

“Sure, Bellamy,” Sydney nodded. “Should I take this as you joining us again?”

“My place is with the people.”

He only exhales after she leaves, and he is both relieved and worried. This doesn’t come as easy to him as it once had. Maybe he’d grown softer in the manor, the worst wounds he dealt with being paper cuts. Or maybe he simply saw that Clarke had been right when she told him that revolutions don’t lead to anything but carnage.

“What do we do now?” Miller asks, pulling the tent flap closed.

“We wait. And tonight we go to Raven’s. We’ll think of something. We have to.”

Miller is quiet for a very long minute and Bellamy knows that he would trust this man with his life.

“I’ll call my dad. He’ll help.”

Miller’s father is a cop. He and Miller are wealthy but for some reason Bellamy never could understand, Miller chose to discard all the wealth and make a living for himself. There is a myriad of things he doesn’t understand about the man standing in front of him, serious and ready to do anything possible, but he trusts him.

In the end, that’s the only thing they can rely on right now.

“Thank you.”

When Miller leaves, Bellamy is left alone with his thoughts and he remembers all the faces he willed himself to forget. He remembers Roma who died young on the streets, fighting for Sydney and fighting for him – never actually knowing that her end would come so soon. He remembers Melanie from the factories, a kind smile and a finger quick on the trigger.

In the end, they didn’t have any other choice. They were as desperate as he was, and they would have accepted anything that at least allowed them to fight. Even fighting and dying was better than waiting and doing nothing. Their blood flowed freely and their souls soared as they battled something they could not understand.

Because the way you change the world is with politics. No one cares about the hand holding the gun, but they do care about the hand holding the money.

If Bellamy had only known that earlier he would have run into the streets and shouted at them to stop because it isn’t going to change anything and the blood will still flow, the lives will be lost and all for naught. He would have shouted at them to stop because they are young and they want to change the world but they can’t.

He would have saved their lives.

But now, it’s all for nothing. Now, it’s only a handful of them that can change it. And where it had once seemed like their hands weren’t strong enough to push back the waves, now they are iron and marble and they can take the heat.

 

Bellamy enters Raven’s house and the first thing he sees is Clarke. She runs towards him and he laughs, relieved, as she buries her head into the crook of his neck, probably even unaware that her legs are wrapping around his waist as she presses him close.

She smells like smoke and he moves away to look at her. There is a cut on her cheek but she is alright. She is alright.

“It’s really good to see you, Princess.”

Her nose scrunches up at the mention of the nickname, now a term of endearment, and she untwines her legs to stand in front of him and stare him down.

“I was worried. You shouldn’t have done it.”

“But now we’ve got an in. Sydney bought into my return.”

He can see worry and pride battling on her face but in the end she just sighs and laces her fingers through his as she leads him to the back of the house.

Octavia grins at him when she sees him and Bellamy’s heart just beats out their names – they are alive. Raven is leaning on Wells, staring intently at her computer screen and there is a man standing next to Octavia whom he doesn’t recognize.  

 “I knew it’d take a lot more than a mob to kill _you_ ,” Raven smirks at him and he can’t help rolling his eyes.

“It’s good to see you too, Raven.”

She grins in reply, a lot of fire he sees in his sister reflected in Raven’s eyes. They were always friends, not as close as they might have been had the cards been dealt differently but then again – the odds weren’t exactly good for all of them to be standing in Raven’s house at the same time and yet here they were.

They are a ragtag bunch, funny at a glance. Clarke with the adamant look in her eyes, shoulders squared and looking no less like a queen even in her jeans and a grey Henley, her fingers laced through Bellamy’s. Octavia, sitting on the top of Raven’s workbench and brushing the stray tools aside as she smiles at the tall and very broad man with dark skin and a threatening air about him - even if his gaze is soft as it falls on Bellamy’s sister.

There is Wells Jaha, too, and he may be the one most out of place there but he still works with Raven, fetching her the exact tablet she needs while scrolling down his phone screen at the same time.

“So, you got anything?” he finally asks, the question directed to no one in particular. Still, everyone goes quiet and turns to look at him.

Raven is the first to speak, nodding more to herself than to Bellamy.

“Cams caught Shumway sneaking around the stage and at the exact place where the fire brigade thinks the bombs were detonated. I’ve got them here,” she jerks her hand towards the screen. “And Shumway works for Sydney, right?”

Bellamy frowns at the mention of Shumway’s name. That man is Diana Sydney’s right hand, the same man who first asked Bellamy to join the riots. Not that Bellamy needed convincing, but knowing that his mother and his sister would be taken care of made it easier to decide.

“He does,” Clarke supplies from his side. “And my mother called. She and Thelonious had nothing to do with it which only leaves us with Sydney, really. But we can’t do anything since people trust her. She’s one of them and we,” a crease appears between her brows and Bellamy has to fight off the urge to smooth it away, “are not.”

“Miller’s dad is going to help. We just need enough evidence for him to arrest Sydney.”

“Are the cams enough for Shumway?”

“They should be.”

“I’ll get Monty and Jasper to help,” Raven says. Monty Green and Jasper Jordan are the representatives of the agriculture and pharmacy, respectively, and Bellamy doesn’t know them very well but if Raven trusts them – so does he. “We need as much people as we can get on your side. You’re not exactly popular right now.”

“Not exactly popular?” Clarke smirks. “Is that what you call it when a lynch mob wants to break down your doors?”

 “It could’ve been worse, Griffin. You could’ve been there, and not your hubby.”

This time Bellamy does laugh out loud and it feels like a tiny piece of tension constricting his chest dissipated.

They are laughing as the killers sharpen their axes but they are still children who know of nothing else but living in the moment.

Raven, Octavia and Bellamy grew up knowing that their lives would be wretched. They’d seen their parents work until their hands started bleeding and then some more. They know the feeling of calluses and weary bones intimately – it was their destiny right from the start. And children like them never hoped for great and happy things, only for the small traces of it that they fed on during the dark days.

They were brought into this world knowing that they had no purpose except to work and die one day, and now they see the light for the first time. This freedom that is their shining beacon is worth fighting for, worth dying for.

That light is what made Roma charge with a rifle pointed at her. That light is what made Bellamy push through bodies and blood and fight some more. That light is what keeps them chained to these streets, keeps their souls contained even if they could scream – all because they have hope.

And he sees that hope in Clarke’s eyes, too. He sees it, even if he couldn’t have understood it hadn’t he met her. If she hadn’t become his queen, he wouldn’t have been able to understand how it is that she, a privileged child, would ever need to _find_ hope.

But now he knows how lonely it was, how gruesome it was for her to see her father getting killed for siding with his people and her mother letting him down. How lonely the manor’s walls must have been for a girl who had inherited her father’s passion, even if the monarchy turned it into ice.

The flame burned on, and it brought light to everyone’s eyes.

Octavia clears her throat and Bellamy sees her in the right light for the very first time tonight. She looks older, as if life fast-forwarded in front of her eyes and now she can’t unsee it. But she looks braver, taller, feistier.

For her, he’d bring all of the pillars of the kingdom down.

“This is Lincoln,” she gestures towards the man next to her. “Lincoln Woods. He works for Ark TV.”

A journalist. Bellamy’s stomach plummets as he eyes the man warily. “What the hell is he doing here, O?”

But Wells is the one to reply and it’s incredible that the prince of Ark’s calm brings calm to everyone else. “He’s fine. I checked him out. Besides, he wants to help.”

“You do?”

Lincoln nods, his voice like a rumbling of thunder when he speaks at Bellamy and Clarke. “Yes. The press needs to choose a side and this is ours.”

They are choosing sides, as if they were fighting a war.

And then Bellamy realizes – they are. They are and he was just too blind to see it.

 

**

 

“You were right.”

The sky is twenty shades of purple and thirty shades of pain. The sea, Bellamy heard, reflects the color of the sky. And in Ark, the sky reflects the color of people’s souls.

Pain may not be a color but it might as well be because it’s all that he can see in the sky darkening above him and Clarke, standing in Raven’s backyard and trying to breathe. His lungs are constricted with panic and terror because of the things he has to do.

“About what?”

“About Sydney. About the revolution. It devours its own children and my allies _did_ betray me.”

Clarke frowns at him. She does that a lot these days, always frowning until he can kiss it away. It was easier when they were safe. Now he can’t find enough happiness in him to give it to her.

“Do you think I wanted to be right?” she asks, incredulous and he shrugs. “God, no, Bellamy. I didn’t want to be right. But it’s like you said – historia est magistra vitae,” her tongue breaks over the vowels and he chuckles like he always does when she repeats his words. “History is the teacher of life. What has happened will happen again.”

“So, we’re doomed?”

“I don’t know.”

“Honestly, I was expecting you to tell me that we’re not.”

Clarke flashes him a smile and sits down on the ground, propping herself up on her elbows. The night is warm and it might have been beautiful had it not been for their impending doom.

They’re dancing on the edge of a precipice; one move can decide whether they live or die, but in a way they have always felt like this. Always in a state of constant vigilance, always in a state of crisis. They probably wouldn’t even know how to live in peace.

“I don’t want to lie to you,” she whispers, looking off into the distance. Smoke is rising from the buildings downtown, and lights are off all around them. The only thing good about the darkness is all the stars.

“It’s fine,” he assures her, settling behind her and allowing her to rest her head in his lap, her eyes glued to his face. This feels normal, this feels comfortable. This feels like all the years they didn’t get to live out together and probably never will.

“We have to fight. That’s what I know, Bellamy. We have to fight.”

“But not tonight?”

“Not tonight, no,” she smiles and he thinks that everything is going to be alright as long as she’s near.

That night is different. It is the last night they’ll get to spend together and desperation is clear in their touches. Clarke brushes her fingertips along the line of his chest and leaves only sorrow; he kisses her and it’s despair when she returns it.

The sheets tangle around them in Raven’s spare bedroom and they know that their moans are loud and cutting through the house but they are reckless enough to forget about everything else for a while. There is nothing but the dark room and their bodies in the whole world and it reminds him of all the nights he’d spent in his tent with girls whose names he can’t remember.

He can’t remember their names because he’d never thought to ask but Clarke’s mouth is as hungry as theirs were and he stills.

“What’s wrong?”

He hears the worry in her voice and drops his head to her shoulder because he can’t breathe again. She is not made for this, he forgot how to be this and this is not them. These are two desperate people who don’t know what they are anymore – there are only contexts that they can place themselves in. Rulers, rebels, survivors, dead.

Dead, dead, dead – it echoes in his head, bouncing off of the walls and seeping into his skin. His touch brings death and he wishes she never showed him compassion because that way, she would have been safe. She would have been whisked off to a safe haven somewhere far away and she wouldn’t be lying naked beneath him and eyeing him as if he were a ticking bomb she doesn’t have the time to get away from.

“Bellamy, talk to me.”

Her hand on his cheek grounds him only a little and he allows her to raise his head so their gazes lock. He sees fight and he sees rebellion, dying for the right cause and bringing a hammer to the thrones. Mockeries draped in velvet and rubies, pawns used up until the first former ally can overthrow them.

“ _Bellamy_.”

She used to sneer his surname. Blake. Used to mock the way he walks, the way he talks. _“You sound like a fucking politician, and you claim you’re not one.”_ She hated him and he hated her.

Oh, how the tables have turned.

Now her name for him is Bellamy. Not Blake, not asshole but Bellamy. And it slides over her tongue so wonderfully that he never wants to stop hearing it. But she is not his. And he is not hers. If she were ice, he would be fire, and maybe they could create a wonderful disaster but that’s not what they want.

He moves off of her and scrambles to get his clothes, leaving her stunned in the middle of the bed.

“You need to go.”

He hears the floorboards creaking as she stands up too and from there, it’s only a second before she’s propping up on her toes, coming so close their noses brush. Now he sees well-disguised hurt under layers of anger.

“What the _fuck_ are you doing?”

“You need to go,” he repeats but she doesn’t move. “Go somewhere far away, go somewhere safe. This is not where you should be.”

She scoffs, angry like he’d seen her only once – right after their wedding when she had sneered like this, told him that she was the fucking queen and he was just a child playing revolutionary.

“If you don’t want me here, tough luck. I’m staying. This is my place. This is what I need to do. And the fact that you’re here is – _was_ – a lucky break. I’ll survive either way.”

Bellamy says nothing, keeps his eyes trained on her face because she is naked and furious and her skin shines like diamonds. She too was created under pressure that would break anyone else.

“But if this is some self-righteous shit of yours,” she continues, rolling her eyes, “trying to push me away so you wouldn’t worry if I’m going to get killed – you can drop the act and return to bed. Because I don’t have time for that.”

And he laughs because she knows him. They’ve been in this shit together for months and still she knows him so well that it makes her roll her eyes and tug him back on top of her.

“I’m not here because of you, Bellamy,” she tells him, pressing open-mouthed kisses to his neck and making him shiver. He always shivers when she touches him, the very evidence of why they are polar opposites and shouldn’t work. “I’m here of my own free will. And you know I don’t get a lot of those.”

And he knows. He knows the feeling and he kisses her loud and desperate, the way he feels because his heart is beating in his chest like it wants to rip through skin and break free, get them – all of them – somewhere to safety, and he is desperate to live, desperate to love, desperate to survive.

Tonight they don’t get to find out what their destiny is but they get to be together and forget everything for a little while.

It’s enough.

 

**

 

They form two currents and it reminds him of how it used to be when they got married.

Clarke is standing on the stage, dried blood in her hair as Wells holds her up at her right, and Raven at her left. Her eyelids are heavy, that much Bellamy can see from his spot in the crowd, and Sydney is gloating next to him.

Three nooses are placed above their heads as Murphy pushes Raven forward and she hisses at him. Bellamy and Miller’s eyes meet for only a split of second and the crowd is on fire, the crowd is burning in shouts echoing across the square as they call for their deaths.

Octavia is right next to Bellamy and she squeezes his hand, assures him with just that one brush of her fingertips against his. He is watching Miller place a noose over Clarke’s head, tightening it until her knees buckle under her and Wells has to help her stay upright.

Two months. Two months of nothing but planning and surviving, lying and plotting to bring peace to this nation. Bellamy rewinds the scenes in his head and he only gets glimmers of memories. Raven’s bared teeth as Murphy threatens to uncover them – her fast hands, working day and night to make sure that the stage is rigged with explosives, ominous nod to what set this off in the first place but now a safeguard in case they have to run.

Wells’ tired smile when they’re leaning against Raven’s house, nothing but ash and cinders in the air. The camaraderie he sees in the man’s hand clapping on his back and telling him, “ _You did good, Bellamy._ ” The peace emanating from him and the image of what a true ruler should be.

Octavia kissing Lincoln in the hallway next to Raven’s workshop, their home in the last two months. Her furious eyes as she thinks Bellamy is going to protest but he can’t. He knows his baby sister and he knows that she is as furious as the rest of them. He is doing all of this to protect her and if she can get a moment of happiness amidst all the sadness, he’s glad.

Monty and Jasper cracking jokes, Monty’s bathtub full of distilled alcohol and Jasper’s goggles. Representatives, teenagers, elders their burdens turned them into. Still full of life. Still somewhere in the torch-wielding mass of people.

The smell of gunpowder in Bellamy’s new tent. The whiteness of Sydney’s teeth. The girls he rejected with the words of being too tired when in reality he didn’t want them because he knows that loves Clarke.

Clarke. Clarke and her eyes. Always her eyes, God, like there is nothing else but the electricity in them that fuels this whole storm. Clouds clashing, the image of what she should be and what she truly is. Her gritted teeth and her shaking hands as she saves Jasper’s life after Sydney finds out that he’s helping “the tyrants”. _“I’ll make them pay for it,”_ in Clarke’s voice, cold and furious. Ice burns your skin the same as fire does. It’s just the varying degrees of pain.

Knowing that they may not be able to stop this peacefully. Knowing that there is a chance that the only way they can go is if they go up in flames. Tragedy at the beginning, tragedy at the end. Tragedy in the middle, tragedy their blood is laced with, tragedy their hearts sing about.

A flash of gold around the corner, Bellamy thinks of The Iliad and Achilles and Patroclus and wonders if his and Clarke’s only comfort may be mixing their ash when they’re dead, too. Maybe that will be their peace.

It feels like a relief when he climbs on the stage alongside Sydney who takes her place behind the microphone. She can’t stop the satisfaction she feels and it seeps into her voice, turns her into a collection of grimaces – into a monster.

“It all stops today,” she announces. “Your pain, dear citizens, it all stops today because we finally have the tyrants here and it is your choice what we do with them. Do you want them to suffer the same as you did when the bombs had blown up your loved ones? When you lived knowing that you will never be able to work enough to live in peace? Or do you want to show them kindness that they have never shown you?”

Clarke’s left eye is swollen but she keeps her gaze on Sydney. If people were natural disasters, she would be a whirling tornado kept just at bay. Let down your guard and it will destroy you.

“Clarke Griffin,” Sydney smiles at her, threatening and this is how she ends. This is how Diana Sydney ends – this is her downfall, the thirst for power. Bellamy can almost feel a smile tugging on his mouth. “You are guilty of treason. Sentence?”

She turns towards the people and they echo in unison: “Death!”

“Wells Jaha.” Wells’ jaw is defiant, his eyes red and every muscle in his body tense. “You are guilty of treason. Sentence?”

“Death!”

“Raven Reyes.” Raven bares her teeth at Sydney and Bellamy knows that she will go down fighting. He remembers her saying that she had come into this world covered in blood and kicking, and she had no problem going out the same way. “You are guilty of treason. Sentence?”

“Death!”

“The people have spoken. They have charged you with treason and sentenced you to death. And I hope you find no peace in it, knowing that you were the ones who caused so many losses when your bombs took away one hundred – “

“Wrong.”

Sydney pauses, the choir of voices standing in front of the stage quietens, and Bellamy steps out of the ranks. He hears whispers, murmurs, _what the hell is he doing what the hell_ -

“There is only one person who should be charged with treason today. And it is Diana Sydney.”

She is shocked and isn’t moving, but as soon as Bellamy opens his mouth to speak again it seems as if she had fast-forwarded and she shrieks,

“Get him! Miller, Murphy!”

The two don’t move and she stares, her jaw dropping, as Bellamy nods and they untie the nooses around Wells, Clarke and Raven’s necks.

“This kingdom has been through so much. We had rulers who cared for nothing but for their wealth, their power, their influence that ruined our lives. We had rulers who were benevolent but didn’t dare change anything should they be stripped of their privilege. We had kings and queens, queens and kings – no one who cared for us. And then we had traitors who stood in our midst and showed us their smiles as their claws dripped with venom. These people you have sentenced to death,” he gestures towards the three, “are innocent.”

“How dare you! _We_ are the innocent who have been wronged!” Sydney shouts at him.

“You are not us, Diana Sydney. If you were one of us, you wouldn’t have sent your people to do your dirty work for you and plant the same bombs that killed a hundred of our citizens! A hundred of working class people who believed that you could change something – who believed in good in the people they gave their vote to, only to be killed for your goals!”

His voice is hoarse and his throat hurts. Tear gas, shouting, chanting, fighting, gunpowder and smoke. The anthem of this revolution.

“But you want proof,” he turns to the people again. “And you deserve nothing less.”

The screen behind them flickers on and Lincoln’s face is the first thing they see. His voice leads them through videos, blurry ones of Shumway traipsing around the stage on the day the bombs blew up, images of Diana Sydney meeting with Cage Wallace, bank accounts and money transfers, Wallace’s confession of collaborating with Sydney only for her to come for him first.

“Cage Wallace is dead today. And there will be many more if this continues. What we offer is freedom of choice. Democracy. Your elected representatives to lead you the way you want them to. Not tyrants. I call you to mourn the ones you lost today, knowing that no man, no woman and no child will be denied help should they ask for it. And tomorrow, let us rebuild a society!”

At first, there is a stunned silence and then multiple things happen at once. People start cheering and clapping, Sydney lunges for him and the ground shakes beneath their feet.

Raven’s eyes are wide in terror and she shakes her head frantically. “I didn’t do it!”

But the ground is still shaking and he can almost hear the mechanism twisting under their feet, ticking away the two minutes until it all blows up.

“Did you honestly think I didn’t know what you had planned?” Sydney hisses at Bellamy, her hand gripping his throat. “I knew you were a traitor, Blake. Knew it from the moment you opened the manor’s doors. And now you die like one.”

Clarke is shouting at people to get away, she is shouting and shouting and someone is screaming – voices become yells and shrieks, frenzy and chaos as people stumble over one another in attempt to get to safety.

Bellamy hears Octavia calling his name and then Clarke – her voice breaking and he sees her moving in, stumbling towards where Sydney still has her hand around his throat and he still can’t move. What for? They’re all dead anyways.

“Get away from him!”

Sydney winces as Clarke cocks the gun in her hand and presses it to the back of Sydney’s head.

“Or what?”

“Do I sound desperate to you, Diana? Because I _am_ desperate and I _will_ shoot you.”

The grip she has around his throat loosens and Bellamy stumbles back, sending the microphone flying to the floor with a crackling sound, barely audible in the stampede.

He looks at Clarke and he knows that she is aware that there is not enough time to get away. But she still jerks her hand, the gun hitting Sydney across her temple as she folds over and falls to the floor.

“Let’s go!”

Her hand is gripping his tightly and he looks over his shoulder to find that they are the only two people left on the stage. Octavia is shouting his name a safe distance away and Lincoln’s arm holds her around her waist as she tries to wriggle out of his grip.

“Bell!”

Clarke is running and he is running but there isn’t enough time and that’s the only sentiment in his mind as the ground shakes beneath his feet for the one last time and the boom is so loud it leaves nothing but static in his ears as it sends them flying forward.

The pavement is hot on his cheeks and he blinks. Warmth, and then silence. He moves his fingers and knows he’s alive when he tries to get up because it hurts so fucking much.

Silence. Static. White noise as he watches people run around him, their clothes on fire and their faces bloody. There is blood on his hands, too, and it’s no match for the one he sees every night before he goes to sleep.

Her body is few feet away and he runs towards her, stumbles over someone else and doesn’t stop to see if they’re alive because all he can see is her golden hair and her dirty clothes and all that blood, dear God don’t let her be dead.

He is running and it feels like he isn’t breathing until he rolls her over to her side, face covered in blood and scrapes, lips slightly parted and eyes closed shut. Silence and static as he shakes her, knows that he screams out her name because his throat hurts but his ears hear nothing.

And then everything comes back, violent and loud, the screams, the terror, the fury he’d seen before and he sees now and he knows that they are no better than Sydney, no better than anyone else who hurt this people to push their own interests.

This is their fault. This is their fault and Clarke isn’t moving, sirens are wailing in the distance and the whole world looks like it’s on fire around them.

It’s black and red and grey and colorless and vivid and dreams and nightmares and holy terror.

He shakes her again, leans in to check if she’s breathing and pounds at her chest when he realizes that she’s not. He presses his hands to her ribcage over and over again, fifteen pounds to her chest to two mouth to mouth until he’s desperate and shaking her again and she finally opens her eyes. Terror, fear, panic, the world is on fire the world is on fire the world is-

“Bellamy?”

The world is on fire but she is alright and with her face pressed into the crook of his neck he looks around, sees Octavia helping Raven up, Lincoln and Wells running towards them, Miller carrying Monty and Jasper leaning on Murphy.

The world is on fire and there is nothing but ash and cinders he could only feel before and now breathes, but they are alright. They are alive.

The world is still on fire but Bellamy smiles because this is what they do – they are goddamned survivors and the only dance they’ve ever learned is the one where they set you on fire and you’ve got to move your feet through the flames.

 

 

**

 

Clarke is helping the wounded and he is giving out the food and it looks like a fucking carnage. You never get used to blood, not really, but you work through it. And that’s what he does. He puts one foot in front of the other, his ears still hurting and his face scraped but he is alright. He is alive.

Octavia tells him to take a rest and he can only say one thing.

“I’ll take a rest when you do.”

His sister smiles wryly because she knows full well that she doesn’t intend to stop. No one who can walk on their two feet and knows how to use their hands will stop when they need to help their people.

No longer rulers, Bellamy and Clarke fall to the floor as the sun sets, spilling red over red above the kingdom and they watch it in silence. No longer rulers, just disasters with tragedy ingrained in their skin and sadness interwoven with every happy moment.

It is not peaceful – peace never is. Peace is work and peace is built on the backs of sacrifices. They know it better than anyone and that’s why it’s enough when he pulls her to her feet and wraps his arms around her, relishing in every piece of his skin touched by hers.

He falls in love with her, covered in blood and more blue patches of skin than white, her hair charred by the flames and her skin smelling of gunpowder and loss.

He falls in love with her because he doesn’t know how to fight just that anymore and because it feels like the two of them are the last two people in the world.

They let everything else fall away for a moment as they realize that there is still work to be done but maybe there is hope. Maybe. Maybe that will be their certainty.

“We need to do something about the orphans,” he finally says.

And Clarke smiles at him, incredulous like every time – as if the very notion of being able to laugh surprises her. It is only today that it is fitting.

“All that violence and you still _care_.”

Bellamy wants to laugh in her face because – she’s the one to talk. But the truth is, the world has been trying to turn them hard since they’ve known about themselves, and the only thing that they can do is become soft.

“That’s the only thing we’ve got left now, Clarke. Damn it, we’ve got to be kind.”

And that is how they rebuild. That is how they create out of destruction. That is how a new society rises from the ashes of the old.

The world is still on fire but they smile into each other’s skin because this is the first time the fire feels like a home. And this is the first time that the flames will bring warmth and safety, not pain and destruction.

This is their home.

And this is what they will keep living for.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I mean, this is just a gift that keeps on giving. I've got ideas for a Linctavia and a Wellven one-shot, if you'd be interested in reading that, but I'd also consider any other ideas you might have. :)
> 
> In any case, I hope you liked this! And if you did, please remember the dynamic duo: kudos & comments because your reviews mean a whole lot to me and always make me feel fuzzy inside. You're all lovely and thank you for reading this in the first place!
> 
> p.s. i can be reached at [tumblr](http://marauders-groupie.tumblr.com).


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